Pay telephone services allow customers to access different services over a telecommunications network and to pay for the services through the networks billing scheme. For example, one such service might be the provision of lottery information. A telecommunications network contains a database of information about customers, customer area codes, and other data to control routing of calls and billing of customers. Through pay telephone services, a caller can be billed a premium price for calls, typically to a 900 number, by the toll network company in a way that is similar to the way the toll network bills its customers for ordinary calls. The main difference, aside from the price of the call, is that the service provider usually receives payment through the toll network company which bills the customer through its own billing process. Service providers can also receive payment for services directly such as, for example, by credit card, through a special credit account, or by billing the customer directly.
Pay services may include pay per product services such as home shopping or catalog services and pay for information services such as government services, banking and financial services, customer services, news services, polling and surveys, fund raising, marketing and promotion opportunities, dating services, health care information services, sports score services, weather services, etc. Typically a caller dials a 1-900 telephone number and is connected through the toll network to a service bureau which connects the caller to voice machines or human beings to interact with the caller. The pay-per-product call is typically free to the user (but its cost is accounted for in the cost of the product to the consumer).
The price charged for a call can be a fixed rate per call or a fixed rate per minute of connect time. Other combinations are possible, for example, there may be a grace period during which the caller can hang up without incurring any charge. The call may run one rate for the first N incremental time periods (e.g. minutes) and another rate for each increment of time thereafter. A single call for an expensive service, for example medical advice, might be a hundred dollars or more.
Revenue losses suffered by pay service providers from such pay calls can be substantial when customers do not pay. Automatic number identification has helped to identify callers known that present a high risk of fraud. This information can be used in advance of a call. Automatic number identification provides the telephone number of the calling party (or the NPA of the originating LEC). Through a credit look-up process, the toll network provider may determine the caller's credit history, at least with respect to their toll service bill. In other words, the toll network company may verify, by looking up the calling number, callers with bad credit history. A call from a customer that is a bad credit risk can then be blocked by simply not connecting the call.
In the prior art, it is known to block calls where a bad credit card number (invalid number or bad credit history) is entered by a caller (U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,020 to Fodale). Also known is call-blocking where the ANI delivered by the local exchange carrier (LEC) is correlated with a bad credit history. Such capability is provided by Lucent Technologies' #4 Electronic Switching System (#4ESS) in communication with a database computer called a network control processor (NCP). This system also provides call-blocking in the event of a bad credit card number. A call-blocking system described in a patent to Friedes (U.S. Pat. No. 5,311,572) prompts a caller for additional information if the ANI information is insufficient to verify the identity of the caller. Another calling system that is responsive to credit information about a customer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,904 to Kaplan. A special number for dial ordering is made available by the telecommunications provider. The system checks the subscription status of callers that place orders by dialing-in product codes by looking up the ANI. The patent does not describe sharing of credit information.
The prior art solutions discussed above suffer from several drawbacks. For example, the capability for supplying the number of the calling party, a feature called automatic number identification (ANI), is not available in all areas. The availability depends on whether the LEC provides this information. Another problem for service providers results when surcharges are applied to certain calls. For example, calls in which a calling card is used to pay for the call require operator-assistance. Service providers, to insure fees to a given customer are aligned with the service provided, will attach a surcharge to such calls because they are more expensive to handle. Frequently, such surcharges cause confusion resulting in inquiry calls to the toll network company or the service provider and loss of customer goodwill. Also, operator-assisted calls cost more to handle than direct calls.
In some areas where ANI data is not available, there is no way (outside of going to a collection agency) to force a calling party to pay for 900 calls if the caller simply denies making the call. The customer's service cannot be turned off for non-payment. Such areas can be identified, for example, by a particular “problem” LEC. One solution is to have the toll network cut such LECs out. But this leads to revenue losses because paying customers are eliminated along with the problem non-paying customers. In addition, it is hard in the first instance even to identify such problem LECs. One way for a sponsor to set up a 900 number service is to have the toll network company pay the sponsor for calls before the toll network company actually receives payment from customers. In situations where the payments are never received, the toll network company must provide the sponsor with detailed information (ANI, call detail, length of call, etc.) relating uncollected receivables and collect the overpayment from the sponsor.